Recognition of Presence
by Misshallery
Summary: An impassioned journalist. An old guard. The revolutionaries. A ditzy crook. A dead daughter. A hopeful traveller. A pair of lovers. A restless woman. A weary officer. A new life. Ten stories from the Grestin Border.
1. Chapter 1: The News

"I will write of this!" she had said triumphantly. "The whole world shall read of this corruption!"

The inspector followed her speech with what she'd then fancied was apathetic coldness. "Okay," he said, and stamped her passport in red.

She now saw that there was a difference between cold and lost, and those who worked under Arstotska were nothing but the latter anymore.

And so, she began her new article, with the press pass that should have spelled out freedom and not rejection on the desk beside her.

 _The people of Arstotska are held underwater by their disgraceful government, unable to swim or breathe and with nowhere to look but the ocean below. The very place that it is inevitable that they will drown in…_


	2. Chapter 2: The Warzone

"I'm too old for this," Calensk told one of the guards next to him, who ignored him.

"I don't get paid nearly enough," he told the inspector one morning, who shrugged and fingered the photo on his desk.

"I thought I'd stop handling guns when the war ended," he quipped to a detainee as he pressed his into her back, who was too busy stiffening her lip to hear him.

Indeed, he did not enjoy his new post. It only paid marginally better than his previous job of steaming letters, and it was much more tedious. On the surface, he called it boredom, but deep down, he was afraid. He didn't like the idea of firing his gun again. He hadn't done so since the Six Year War. Even imagining the sound of a gunshot coming from his fingertips made them begin quivering ever so slightly.

Maybe it was the way the expanse of the checkpoint looked like no man's land. And how the Grestin Wall looked like a fragile country not worth defending. And how everyone standing in line had the same expression as a soldier queuing up for death.

He didn't like it. Not one bit. He made it through the day thinking about the money he'd bring home. Nice stacks of notes. Wadded envelopes that crackle as they change hands. It was almost sensual.

Hearing his post would be moved closer to the prison was a great relief. A warzone looked less distressing behind the wings. Calensk was only a few feet away, but he already felt more at ease. He took a moment to wonder if that was why the officials were always so reckless. It must be easy to treat people as disposable when you're miles away, safe and powerful and free of the associations between gunshots and bleeding and screaming and death.

Then the moment passed, and Calensk set his mind once more upon bank notes and not firing his gun.


	3. Chapter 3: The Venom

_File: Body text from unauthorised propaganda, distributed by the group 'EZIC' or 'Order of the EZIC Star'._

ARSTOTZKA IS A BEAST, GLUTTONOUS AND EVIL. IT HOARDS ITS PEOPLE AND HIDES THEM AWAY FROM THE WORLD WHILE THE GREEDY, THE PUPPET MASTERS, PROSPER.

MANY DESPAIR OVER THIS REALITY, BUT SAY IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KILL A BEAST SO LARGE.

THE ORDER OF THE EZIC STAR DISAGREES.

WHEN YOU ALLOW THE VENOM OF REVOLUTION TO PIERCE A GIANT'S VEINS, NO ANTIDOTE ON EARTH CAN QUELL SOMETHING SO POTENT. EZIC IS THIS VENOM, THE SUBSTANCE THE PEOPLE OF ARSTOTZKA NEED SO DEARLY. JOIN OUR RANKS AND WE SHALL SLAY THE BEAST, OVERTHROW IT AND LET THE PEOPLE BE FREE.

GLORY TO THE NEW ARSTOTZKA. THE ONE THAT SHALL BLOOM ONE DAY SOON.


	4. Chapter 4: The Finest

_From the diary of Jorji Costava._

Tomorrow I enter Arstotzka! The greatest country of them all. Good place to sell my 'wares'. I tried to enter already, but nice inspector man (I know he still nice guy, just diligent) say that I need passport, so last night I make my own.

Obristan nice country, yes, but not such exciting name. Only best things get admission to Arstotzka, so I make it better. Cobrastan! Snakes very dangerous but very exciting, perfect name for original country of Jorji the new Arstotzkan. Land of cobras. I found good leaflet last week on street, asking people to join ranks of venom in Arstotzka. Maybe snake-people? Many interesting people to meet in glorious Arstotzka!

I also fix passport visa stamp thing- if I label 'pre-approved', nice guy inspector cannot say no! Is foolproof. I will have great life in fine country of Arstotzka, and they lucky to have great mind like Jorji too.


	5. Chapter 5: The Funeral

There was nobody but a father to attend Julia's funeral.

Her mother gone. No siblings to speak of. An extended family far away somewhere. He didn't even have a body to bury; Wen had taken that from him too. He simply stood over the spot where he would have put her.

You usually don't have proper funerals in Kolechia. The family takes rusty shovels and buries the body by hand, coffin-less, in a graveyard. If you are rich, you have a headstone carved, and it not, you leave your loved one forever unmarked. It's better than the incineration for those who have no family left free or alive.

In the father's opinion, there will be no proper execution for Wen either. At least, not one the state would provide. The idea of him dying a painless death made him sick to the stomach.

Before Julia's death he had been a good man, an innocent man. He didn't think he was a man who could kill. He had abstained from the Six Year War with a leg defect and wondered how men could shoot their enemies so easily

Now he knew, and he knew well. The second he saw Simon Wen's face in the paper, he felt himself change, as though his mind dipped in ice. The simple hatred he felt was easily tapped into.

 _I can kill. And I can kill brutally._


	6. Chapter 6: The Fire

Not long after its receipt, the young Kolechian's head was full of questions surrounding the note: why was an immigration inspector enamoured by him? What did the final panel mean? And most importantly, could he ever bring himself back into the world to be loved by not just one, but many?

He was ready, he decided as he left the inspector's booth, to try. And he would begin his redemption how he ended his depression: with a hearty compliment.

A lone man in a prison guard's uniform passed him near the checkpoint exit, and he realised, in a newly characteristic burst of inspiration, that this was the perfect candidate. Starting with most intimidating man of them all would set him for life. And an intimidating man would appreciate the most mysterious compliment he could provide.

"Comrade," he addressed the guard, who gave him the look of a man who stopped caring before he was even born. "You accept my visa like no other."

When he got no significant reaction, he clasped the guard's arm for emphasis, who finally acknowledged him. "Stupid fucking Kolechian." And then, after a moment of opportunistic consideration, pointed his long gun at him: "You come with me."


	7. Chapter 7: The Lovers

Elisa's voice was all but a crackle over the phone, but it did not bother Sergiu; he had every nuance of the real thing committed to memory. In his mind, it was sweet as a birdsong, one that carried itself over impenetrable borders. He'd never known how to feel any less than agonised in a class-8 hellhole with the heating disabled until he'd called her for the first time. Suddenly, there was semblance of comfort to be had in a place like this.

"I could not find an entry permit," she lamented. He had expected that.

"I know the inspector well," he told her, hoping that soothing tones translated sufficiently into buzz. "He will help you cross. I will see to it."

"But how can we trust this man?"

All he could think of was screeching bikes and poised bullets and cocked guns. A pair of eyes fixed on him until a tranquilliser pierces the gunman's side and he falls. He could not make out the man who shot it, but he could mutually feel his tensed fingers and laboured pants. He was seized with how he felt when he held Elisa's hands in the Kolechian cold and breathed warmth on them both: the desire to protect a safety they shared.

"Because we must," he decided. "It is the only way we survive."


	8. Chapter 8: The Plaques

Recognition of Presence. Sufficience. Excellence. Shae looked hard at the three plaques, some of the last ones in the country, that hung on Dimitri's wall and stayed there. Years ago, watching him fast asleep made her feel powerful, like she'd done well for herself to see someone so influential be so vulnerable. Now it just made her feel violated, bribed for and used and thrown away so he could sleep contentedly.

What had he threatened the border guard with to make him let her through? She thought of her time working under him and shuddered. Nothing that he'd come away from unchanged.

This blooming corruption was a symbol of a fragile state, she had decided as Dimitri snored loudly late last night. _There are no plaques left_ , he had slurred to her tearfully, tongue loose with drink and worry. _Nobody can change the course of Arstotzka now._

She wondered to herself, as the sun crawled up the sky lazily, what would be left if rebels stormed the whole country right now. The people would always be here. The power-hungry, the sleazy, the rich. She glowered at the background noise of Dimitri's heavy breathing. Any new power would have as little to stand on as they had now.

She realised all at once that she didn't hate to see him just because of what he did to her. Shae let herself turn and watch him, no longer wary. It gave her fear, real fear, to see a man of the highest order with timidly shut eyes, loose skinned and lips twitching frightfully in his sleep. Men who tried to carry the world on their shoulders for sport, who traded achievements in plaques and buckled at the consequences of a failure with no one to punish for but themself.


	9. Chapter 9: The Sun

If the Inspector hung his son's drawing on the wall, he wouldn't see all of the height chart. And if he couldn't see all of the height chart, then he couldn't easily check for discrepancies. And if he couldn't easily check for discrepancies, then he could make a mistake and lose part of his pay and perhaps have to watch his son shiver again.

These were the mindless, rounded thoughts he had as he set up for the day under the heavy grey sky, so forlorn he had to switch on the barely lit fluorescents in his booth. He was sure the sun hadn't shone for weeks, or even months. Perhaps years.

Then it would be worth it to have these small rays. He tacked the drawing to the wall tiredly and let it hang, bright-coloured in a world of grey.

And yet the sun had gone in, his review was due soon, and there was still a long line of people's lives to ruin this working day. Even the smallest comforts were gone: Sergiu and his dreary half-smile had been replaced with a new stony-faced guard. Jorji Costava had grinned toothily and slipped him money, dirty but kind, and taken his last leave. Even the booth felt unsafer now, if that was possible, furious rebellion whipping itself into people's chests.

It was the very peak of December and, the Inspector realised, the sun wouldn't shine again in Arstotzka for a long time. There was no longer a place for any of them here.


	10. Chapter 10: The Hills

Her uncle told her there was much snow in Obristan this time of year. "The ground is hardly flat there," he explained patiently. "So snow gathers in all the nooks and crannies of the hills, and splays itself over the tips too."

She could not understand how that explanation worked, but she nodded happily and accepted it nonetheless. She liked the uncle she had hardly met before last week, anyway, and she liked the snow, too. Snow in Arstotzka usually melted as soon as it settled on the ground. She could only recall one time it had stuck, when she was much smaller. Her mother called in sick so they could play the whole day, chasing each other around the pure white street and building a little man out of the snow.

That evening, a government official visited to inquire about her mother's 'illness'. He called the snowman 'transgressional' and fined them. He even knocked the head off its body with the butt of his gun as he left their apartment building, and she bawled so hard it took her mother an hour to console her.

Her uncle also told her that Obristan was different from Arstotska in other ways. "It is better place," he said, and nothing more.

She could not bring herself to mind all the uncertainty. It was good to leave everything behind. Her mother's pending execution. The social workers with their empty faces. The man who'd approached her the day before her adoption with a 'proposition' and a business card. She wanted the money he offered, but she showed her aunt the card when she came to her new home for the first time, and she threw it away in an instant, clearly rattled.

The day passed in one long blur. She found that all the images burned into one: the train, with so many empty seats she could lie down on them and nap. The long line of people, rocking on their heels and trying not to look back. The passport that spelled her name wrong. The inspector with hard eyes like her uncle's.

But there was one scene she saw clearly, one that she could envision even years later as she remembered her plight. As she and her family finally crossed the border and stepped onto the paved roads of Obristan, all they could look at was the horizon. Hills as far as the eye could see, all freshly white and new against the sunrise.

Post-note:

Thanks very much for the read, I'm happy to be writing for an underrated game that doesn't have a lot of fan material already. 3

I've written some personal notes on each chapter on my tumblr about my headcanons and writing process (I thought saving them until the end would be nice since the story is made to be read all in one go). post/172760422843/some-personal-notes-about-my-papers-please


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